


I'm well acquainted with villains that live in my head

by twoheartsx



Category: Invader Zim
Genre: Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Mentioned bullying, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-12
Updated: 2016-05-12
Packaged: 2018-06-07 21:54:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6825955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twoheartsx/pseuds/twoheartsx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dib doesn't like the pills and so he doesn't take them. </p>
<p>A take on just how bad things can get for our little paranormal investigator.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm well acquainted with villains that live in my head

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is pretty dark. (I think?) It's my view on Dib's mindset and how overtime without help how much worse it can get. I think I tagged everything but if not let me know and I will tag it. Also I looked over this by myself so I'm not sure how well I did on correcting the errors in it.

It was a ticking, like a faint tapping in his head. A faint tapping that was barely noticeable and yet so forceful. Like a quite sound the irks you and drives you insane. A sound that, even if it shouldn't, it annoys you. You want to take the object that dare makes that noise, smash it, tear it apart. You seek to stop that incessant noise. At least, Dib does. His hands grip the side of the sink, knuckles turning white from how tight he was gripping it. The ticking, that persistent sound won’t stop. That voice in the back of his head, quietly whispering. It makes him mad. It makes him mad because it won’t stop talking. They just keep talking and talking. They whisper and laugh and taunt and he wants it to stop. He wants those voices to stop. He wants to make them stop. 

He looks up, looking at himself in the mirror. He sees a boy, dark hair and dark eyes, who looks so tired. He’s pale and before Dib has time to register what happened the glass shatters. Broken shards of glass fill the sink and hit the floor. Tiny pieces of his reflection are on the floor and in the sink. Blood drips down, hitting the broken glass. Red liquid drips over Dib’s reflection, covering it in blood and distorting the image. He feels a pain in his hand, his eyes moving to look. His hand is pressed to what remains of the mirror. His knuckles bleeding. His face is warm and wet and he knows it’s from tears. He hadn’t even realized he had been crying. He slowly pulls his hand back, watching the blood drip into the sink, onto the floor. He’s bleeding, slowly and the slow drip fascinates him. The idea of him bleeding in it’s own strange way fascinates him. He looks up to see his sister standing there. Her face says she’s surprised and yet not fazed at all. It’s usual, it’s just how she is. Dib is surprised in himself, but it doesn’t matter. Because he doesn’t care. 

Gaz, hands him a towel and tells him, cold and calmly, to clean up this mess. Dib wraps the towel around his fist, looking at the mess. She tells him dad may worry if he sees this, both know he won’t. Science is all that mattered, the faults in his children were just another scientific thing. Another genetic code that with enough poking and prodding could be changed. It can’t but his father never listened. 

Dib, was to everyone around him, insane and maybe that fact was true. Dib refused to believe it, wanting to hold onto even the slightest hope that, yes he was sane. That he wasn’t going to end up like all those other crazy people, medicated and in straight jackets. That he wasn’t going to have part of his brain removed because his father deemed it unnecessary. Because science could fix anything, that’s what his dad truly thought. 

When his father asked about how the mirror broke Dib lied. He had learned to lie, was learning it even more nowadays. He had stopped talking about aliens and other things like that. He kept it to himself and bottled up his feelings. His isolation did nothing for his mental health. He wanted so bad to reach out, for attention and people to understand him. He wanted acceptance but also he wanted to be alone. He thought everyone was lying to him and yet he needed to talk. He wanted friends and yet felt everyone was betraying him. He found no one wanted to hear his theories, labeling him and bullying him. He slowly gave up on talking to people. Taking sometimes up to three days off of school. He didn’t need to attend, his dad could pay them to look away from his lack of attendance. His grades wouldn’t drop because he was smart. There was no issue in him not going to school for a few days. 

Dib is sixteen when finally a counselor pulls him aside. The first person in his whole life to see how mentally unstable he is. The man, in his mid-thirties, is a nice guy and tells Dib to seek help. With this pushing of that nice guy who just wants to help someone Dib sees a doctor. He’s diagnosed with Bipolar disorder and given medicine. Pills that are promised to help him. The doctors say it will make everything better. That with these he will finally be happy and cured. Dib doubts it, but takes them none the less. Because he hates this coldness and the loneliness. So, he takes the pills, sometimes. He finds he doesn’t like the side effects and something in him says not to take them. He doesn’t like how they make him feel. So, sometimes he takes them and sometimes he doesn’t. No one notices because Dib acts like he’s okay. No one cares to notice ether. Dib is for once thankful that no one cares what happens to him. 

Dib isn’t sure why he did it. It wasn’t the smartest thing now that he thought about it. A bottle of vodka and Zim proved to cause him trouble. He was off his medicine again because he was sick of feeling off. He was tired of not feeling like himself. Dib had been hanging out with Zim and decided to get drunk. He had the urge and just like when he punched the mirror, his body did it almost without his knowledge. He did this often, things he didn’t mean to. Most were things that meant hurting himself in someway. Putting his life in danger someway. Doing things that were just all around harmful. Things he had the urge to do and didn’t see reason why he shouldn’t. That's how he ended up here, pressed to the wall, lips against Zim’s. Both knew where this was going. Both didn’t care. Because they needed this even when they didn’t. Even if it wasn’t right that didn’t matter. Because this wasn’t about right or wrong and it never would be with him and Zim. It was about comfort and doing what brought a moment of relief. Even if it hurt later pain was something Dib was used to. He thought maybe Zim was as well. Something in those pink eyes, when he doesn’t have his contacts in, says that pain isn’t a new feeling. 

Those moments like these drunk and wasted. Wasted in the sense of they aren’t sober and also in the emotional sense. Because they were so alike and yet so different. So, as they pulled each others clothes off, Dib reminds himself, whole heartedly and drunk. This right here was as close to love as he would come, ever. Because neither of them could love. They didn’t even know what love was. 

Dib doesn’t know what makes him decide to do this. He doesn’t know what makes him choose to down a whole bottle of pills, the ones he’d been skipping. He didn’t know why he did it, but he did and his regret was at minimum. He felt bad that he wouldn’t be able to see Zim anymore. The two of them had became what could almost be called friends. Almost, but not quite. Dib felt lightheaded and dizzy, really out of it and he didn’t imagine dying to be like this. He was thankful for the fact he was laying in bed. If he had tried to get up now he would surely fall over. His ability to stand long gone. His eyes slowly closed and he was sure this was it for him. His only regret, not saying goodbye to Zim. 

Dib isn’t sure how it happened. Whether by some miracle or curse, Zim saved him. Likely out of the pure need for him to entertain him. Zim always wanted to own him. To enslave or make equal with him, but likely the first option. Equality seemed like something that would be foreign to the Irken. Like something Zim would lack understanding of. Because to Zim, Dib was merely another obstacle. Maybe, just maybe, that foreign idea of something so fickle as love had made its way into the alien’s PAK. Dib doubted it. Love was complex and he, who was human, couldn’t even understand it. He doubted alien technology could comprehend something as complex as love. It also didn’t seem to fit into their race very well. They more wanted to conquer and control than love. 

Dib figured, after a lot of thinking, that Zim saved him out of the pure need to keep what he claimed to be his. What he wanted to own and Dib could accept that. It was Zim’s way of showing he cared and that was all that mattered. Even if it isn't the way Dib knows he didn’t really know love anyways. If a struggle for power and dominance was what love was about he would do just that. Because Zim was the best person he had met and the only person who didn’t look at him and see a mental case. 

“Find some other escape other than harming yourself.” Was what Zim told him. Those words left Dib searching and that lead to this moment. As Dib stands, hands covered in blood. His new escape, his means of getting out all that anger and self hate. An escape from his sadness without hurting himself and without taking pills. He was helping Zim take over the world, ending meaningless human lives. Well, they weren’t meaningless just the world could do without them. First petty thieves, then murders. Dib would kill people who had committed crimes, he was doing the world a favor, he tells himself. Slowly over time though, the deaths turn from deservent people to innocent people. They mocked Dib and that was how Zim justified it. How he convinced Dib it was okay. It felt right and yet not right. Because murder is still murder, but these people were doomed anyways. It kept Dib’s mind off his own demons. It worked and when he had time he would write his feelings down. He would write down all those bitter feelings he had and those brought to life on the pages. Monsters, begging to be told in the form of stories. 

Dib spoke in words of poetry and words he didn’t understand but those monsters liked them. He only ever showed his words to Zim since he had always been there for him. Because somewhere deep down Dib knew Zim understood what demons clawing at the inside of your head and biting holes in your brain feels like. Those whispering words that drive you to brink of madness and back. Zim understands better than anyone else. That’s what made this all so dangerous.


End file.
